T-3.IV Error and the Ego
1. The abilities you now possess are only shadows of your real strength. ²All of your present functions are divided and open to question and doubt. ³This is because you are not certain how you will use them, and are therefore incapable of knowledge. ⁴You are also incapable of knowledge because you can still perceive lovelessly. ⁵Perception did not exist until the separation introduced degrees, aspects and intervals. ⁶Spirit has no levels, and all conflict arises from the concept of levels. ⁷Only the Levels of the Trinity are capable of unity. ⁸The levels created by the separation cannot but conflict. ⁹This is because they are meaningless to each other.
2. Consciousness, the level of perception, was the first split introduced into the mind after the separation, making the mind a perceiver rather than a creator. ²Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego. ³The ego is a wrong-minded attempt to perceive yourself as you wish to be, rather than as you are. ⁴Yet you can know yourself only as you are, because that is all you can be sure of. ⁵Everything else is open to question.
3. The ego is the questioning aspect of the post-separation self, which was made rather than created. ²It is capable of asking questions but not of perceiving meaningful answers, because these would involve knowledge and cannot be perceived. ³The mind is therefore confused, because only One-mindedness can be without confusion. ⁴A separated or divided mind must be confused. ⁵It is necessarily uncertain about what it is. ⁶It has to be in conflict because it is out of accord with itself. ⁷This makes its aspects strangers to each other, and this is the essence of the fear-prone condition, in which attack is always possible. ⁸You have every reason to feel afraid as you perceive yourself. ⁹This is why you cannot escape from fear until you realize that you did not and could not create yourself. ¹⁰You can never make your misperceptions true, and your creation is beyond your own error. ¹¹That is why you must eventually choose to heal the separation.
4. Right-mindedness is not to be confused with the knowing mind, because it is applicable only to right perception. ²You can be right-minded or wrong-minded, and even this is subject to degrees, clearly demonstrating that knowledge is not involved. ³The term “right-mindedness” is properly used as the correction for “wrong-mindedness”, and applies to the state of mind that induces accurate perception. ⁴It is miracle-minded because it heals misperception, and this is indeed a miracle in view of how you perceive yourself.
5. Perception always involves some misuse of mind, because it brings the mind into areas of uncertainty. ²The mind is very active. ³When it chooses to be separated it chooses to perceive. ⁴Until then it wills only to know. ⁵Afterwards it can only choose ambiguously, and the only way out of ambiguity is clear perception. ⁶The mind returns to its proper function only when it wills to know. ⁷This places it in the service of spirit, where perception is changed. ⁸The mind chooses to divide itself when it chooses to make its own levels. ⁹But it could not entirely separate itself from spirit, because it is from spirit that it derives its whole power to make or create. ¹⁰Even in miscreation the mind is affirming its Source, or it would merely cease to be. ¹¹This is impossible, because the mind belongs to spirit which God created and which is therefore eternal.
6. The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive something and with something. ²That is why perception involves an exchange or translation, which knowledge does not need. ³The interpretative function of perception, a distorted form of creation, then permits you to interpret the body as yourself in an attempt to escape from the conflict you have induced. ⁴Spirit, which knows, could not be reconciled with this loss of power, because it is incapable of darkness. ⁵This makes spirit almost inaccessible to the mind and entirely inaccessible to the body. ⁶Thereafter, spirit is perceived as a threat, because light abolishes darkness merely by showing you it is not there. ⁷Truth will always overcome error in this way. ⁸This cannot be an active process of correction because, as I have already emphasized, knowledge does not do anything. ⁹It can be perceived as an attacker, but it cannot attack. ¹⁰What you perceive as its attack is your own vague recognition that knowledge can always be remembered, never having been destroyed.
7. God and His creations remain in surety, and therefore know that no miscreation exists. ²Truth cannot deal with errors that you want. ³I was a man who remembered spirit and its knowledge. ⁴As a man I did not attempt to counteract error with knowledge, but to correct error from the bottom up. ⁵I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body and the power of the mind. ⁶By uniting my will with that of my Creator, I naturally remembered spirit and its real purpose. ⁷I cannot unite your will with God’s for you, but I can erase all misperceptions from your mind if you will bring it under my guidance. ⁸Only your misperceptions stand in your way. ⁹Without them your choice is certain. ¹⁰Sane perception induces sane choosing. ¹¹I cannot choose for you, but I can help you make your own right choice. ¹²“Many are called but few are chosen” should be, “All are called but few choose to listen”. ¹³Therefore, they do not choose right. ¹⁴The ’chosen ones’ are merely those who choose right sooner. ¹⁵Right minds can do this now, and they will find rest unto their souls. ¹⁶God knows you only in peace, and this is your reality.